Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
Robin Williams died Monday, in an apparent case of suicide. The outpouring of grief and condolences would probably still be going on if not for the short attention span of an entertainment-gobbling public that has diverted their thoughts to yesterday’s passing of movie icon Lauren Bacall. To be honest, I found Williams a kind of […]
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As in Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite podcasts. While listening to EHG on my way to work this morning, I learned that Sarah D. Bunting (Bunting!), one of the regular hosts, was absent because she was delivering a paper at baseball conference. I did a quick search and deduced it was this one: […]
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I originally posted this on my blog about Jews and sports since Youkilis is one of the handful of Jewish players, but there’s enough book/movie/collectibles that I can kill two birds with one stone, so… * * * Thanks to Robert Whiting, I have been able to find a way to keep tabs on Kevin […]
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Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s certainly an interesting (“based on a true“) story. On the other hand, it seems to borrow from so many baseball/sports films that we’ve already seen. A struggling sports agent? Jerry McGuire, The Scout. Who has an epiphany while witnessing something out of the […]
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Last month, Baseball Nation posted this entry about baseball-themed movie posters, even if the movies weren’t about the game itself, which led to some semantic reservations by yours truly. This time they come out and say that these are “The top 10 baseball scenes (in non-baseball movies)” The piece, by Jim Baker, is especially timely […]
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Long-time Mets broadcaster Howie Rose put in appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show earlier this month to discuss (ostensibly) his memoir, Put It In the Book!: A Half-Century of Mets Mania. You can listen to it here. * * * Baseball once again was a topic, albeit a brief one, on my favorite NPR show, […]
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I love baseball. I love the movies. So the combination of the two is like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: the best of both world. So I was really looking forward to the first episode of MSG’s The Lineup: Best Sports Movies, an eight-part series which debuted with a discussion of baseball features. I was […]
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I bring this up because I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite actor’s baseball-related oeuvres by Jonathan Coe’s new pictorial biography, Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life. Stewart’s career is often discussed in two broad periods: pre-World War II, when he generally played lighter, more genial roles, and following the war (in which he […]
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Hit the mother lode on Kirkus today in a good-news/bad-news scenario. On the plus side, I found several reviews of forthcoming topics for your interest and information. On the down side, 501 isn’t among them. 🙠Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, by John Rosengrean (buy it here). Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing […]
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Rob Edelman, author of Great Baseball Films: From Right Off the Bat to a League of Their Own, recently published this article, focusing (heh) on movies that featured some aspects of the New York Mets.
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This goes back aways, but David Roth wrote about R.A. Dickey, mold-breaker for the concept of the cliched athlete, in the July 9 issue of New Yorker. More recently, Will Leitch offers these thoughts about the Mets in a “reasons to love New York” retrospective. Bruce Markusen at The Hardball Times posted this piece about […]
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For you movie buffs out there, from TheChive.com from a piece about The Shawshank Redemption: Andy and Red’s opening chat in the prison yard, in which Red is pitching a baseball, took 9 hours to shoot. Morgan Freeman pitched that baseball for the entire 9 hours without a single word of complaint. He showed up […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In a former life, I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted an award-winning bog about Jews and Sports.
I did a profile piece on the legendary cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was very generous in immortalizing me in this caricature.
My article on Sandy Koufax in the 1965 World Series appears in
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets’ 1969 postseason appears in
Profiles of several Jewish baseball figures appear in
